DREAMING OF NIEL GOW

Fraser and Haas in a 2004 performance in Stirling, Scotland.


Scottish fiddler Alisdair Fraser and cellist Natalie Haas walked silently to the sanctuary-turned-stage of Brattleboro, Vermont’s First Baptist Church on Friday night. They led with a lament so delicate that the audience was hushed and on the edge of their seats. A particularly beautiful passage from Fraser slid naturally over to Haas, who put aside sonorous tones in favor of rhythmic bops that invited Fraser to hurl himself into the rousing “Calliope Meets Frank” reels. When they finished, the room erupted in cheers.

With that done, Fraser jokingly announced that he and Hass intended to spend the evening “rummaging around in the Scottish condition.” For the next several hours the duo put on a performance that left a standing-room crowd uncertain whether they should howl with delight or stand in silent awe before the display of precision and majesty they had just witnessed. Fraser evoked the 18th century Perthshire fiddler Niel Gow, who used to perform with his brother Donald, a cellist. As Fraser explained, the idea that fiddle should be paired with guitar or accordion is of recent vintage; Scottish musicians once blissfully ignored the lines between Baroque, classical, and folk traditions. In that spirit Fraser and Haas proceeded to obliterate boundaries. Is “Valley of the Moon” a Scottish reel or free-form jazz? Is “Alien Celidh” an experimental composition or a dance tune with a funny name? Who cares? The evening was, by any standard one wishes to apply, one of the most stunning musical performances imaginable.

Now in their ninth year of touring, the musical dialogue between Fraser’s fiddle and Haas’s cello has matured without losing a flicker of the fire that first drew them together. Fraser plays with the seeming effortlessness that typifies the great masters, while Haas attacks her cello with gusto; after all, she has a lot more instrumental space to cover. She also plays with great confidence; little nods on the stage signaled the respect between tutor and former pupil, but small sideway glances also conveyed her independence. Haas’s solo introduction to “Josephine’s Waltz,” the tune that opened the second set, was particularly soulful and commanding.

The level of musicianship was so high that it’s almost a sacrilege to single out specific moments, but two come to mind. “John MacDonald’s Reel” is a lovely tune on its own, but Fraser and Haas slow it down to wrench primal emotion from it—short notes echoing each other as if being etched carefully on a sheet of thin glass. Another highlight was “Trip to Pakistan,” which Fraser cracked “opens the door for Scottish belly dancing.” Well … maybe not, but Haas was suitably bohemian and Fraser played it with rakish bounce.

Haas and Fraser have recorded two albums on the Culburnie label, Fire & Grace (2004) and In the Moment (2007). Each is a masterpiece, though neither is as good as witnessing a live performance. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough—go out of your way to see any project in which Alisdair Fraser is involved. Watching Fraser play is like attending a performance of Cirque du Soleil; you see it happen but you still can’t believe that it’s possible. --LV

FIRST THINGS FIRST

KATHERINE FIRST
Sweet Spot
Fiddle First Music 001

As anyone who has ever picked up an instrument knows, taking it to the next level happens in bursts rather than steady increments. For years I’ve enjoyed Western Massachusetts-based fiddler Katherine First as she played at pub sessions and with a local Celtic rock band. Her debut solo album, however, took me from admiration to awe. She’s always been technically proficient, as befits someone who grew up playing classical music, but if you want to hear why Celtic musicians go to sessions to hone their craft, this album reveals the answer. Skilled Celtic musicians play tunes from inside (the tradition) out (to an audience), whereas mere technicians do the opposite. First’s sensitive cover of “The Island of the Woods” captures the lyrical elegance of Liz Carroll’s original, yet puts First’s own stamp on it in ways that embody deep familiarity with how tunes circulate in the folk community. In like fashion, her original material is at once timeless and innovative. You’ll also hear fresh takes on tunes penned by
Phil Cunningham, Dave Richardson, Maurice Lennon, and Peter Ostroushko. Katherine First has taken her music to the next level, and even greater things are yet to come.

PICKER'S CHOICE

TONY McMANUS
The Maker’s Mark
Compass 7-4500-2

Tony McManus has long been a guitar-player’s guitarist, a musician who matches skill to an intuitive sense of how to go beyond the notes and shape a tune to the atmosphere at hand. On his latest recording he’s become a guitar- builder’s guitarist. It’s fifteen tracks and fifteen different guitars on an album appropriately subtitled The Dream Guitar Sessions. Although many of us would lie, cheat, and steal to lay hands on any one of these magnificent instruments McManus plays, each is particularly glorious in his capable hands. True to the theme McManus opts for a quiet album, its dreamy ambience enhanced by ringing harmonics and such a heavy emphasis on treble notes that the bass runs smack like a heavy right cross following a series of light jabs. There’s a bit of everything here—a cover of a Bothy Band favorite (“The Maids of Mitchelstown”), some Romanian music by way of Québec (“Parov’s Daichevo”), a touch of Spanish flair (“Chalareru”), a dash of Italian melody (“Si Dolce è’l Tormento”), loads of Scottish and Irish favorites, and a 12-string Québeçois finale (“Valse des Bélugas”). This is a perfect album for background music, close listening, or picker’s envy.--LV

SAGE (Minus Parsely, Rosemary, and Thyme)

RACHAEL SAGE
Chandelier
Mpress Records MP4545-2

With seven previous recordings to her credit since 1996, Rachel Sage is a pop veteran. The cover of her latest depicts her in a gaudy gown and sporting a shade of red hair not found in nature. It’s emblematic of her quirkiness and New York City artistic temperament, but how one reacts to her music will depend on where the line is drawn between art and artifice. Sage claims Elvis Costello as an influence, but her piano-based confessional repertoire is more aptly compared to Nora Jones and Tori Amos, though she’s not as gifted as the former or as adventurous as the latter. When Sage airs out her voice she can be compelling, but when she swallows that air she’s just another generic pop singer. There is, for instance, a soulful edge to “Angel in My View” and gutsiness to “Wishbone.” These stand in contrast to tracks such as “Site-Seeing” and “Invincible” in which whispery tones are lost in a thick instrumental fog. Sage occasionally also crosses the border between dramatic and histrionic. Chandelier has a few luminous moments but too often, like the gown and hair, Sage tries too hard to be cool.

"Duplicity" Remixes Business with Pleasure

Duplicity *** 1/2

The latest entry in the double-crossing cons-in-love sweepstakes opens perfectly. An altercation between two corporate titans (Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson) unfolds in ultra-slow motion and in silence; their mano-a-mano fight sets up the film’s action deftly without any exposition and without even telling us who the combatants are.

It hardly matters. These bitter business rivals are the reason our stars (Julia Roberts and Clive Owen) are running their tangled schemes. Owen—whose suave sexuality should have made him the current James Bond in place of that charmless Vladimir Putin lookalike Daniel Craig—and Roberts play corporate spies who may or may not be in love with one another and may or may not be playing on the same team.

The justly praised script (by writer/director Tony Gilroy) is handled with skill by Owen and Roberts, who sparred just as nimbly but much more viciously in Closer. Here, they show off their comic chops and generate some heat during their intermittent encounters in sumptuous hotel rooms in Dubai London, Rome, and Miami.

The atmosphere—in and out of the bedroom—is all about who’s conning who, and the plot twists are fresh and fun.

However, our current real-life flurry of corporate bad behavior makes it difficult to summon much sympathy for either side in the corporate war. And when we finally learn the secret they’re fighting over, it’s hard not to wish that something more socially important was at stake. But this is no Michael Clayton.

Viewers who insist on knowing precisely why the double-crosses are coming thick and fast, or on following each curve of the plot’s many twists and turns, may leave frustrated.

But for those for whom an invigorating ride is enough, Duplicity is honest entertainment.

JAM TO NOWHERE

UMPHREY’S McGEE
Mantis
Sci Fidelty 1117

Everybody wants to jump on the Grateful Dead “jam band” wagon, but the term is losing coherence. It used to mean spontaneous freeform jazz-like explorations of melodic themes; now it’s slapped onto any meandering musical breakout of indeterminate shape. The latest case in point is Mantis. Umphrey’s McGee can astonish, particularly with chirpy harmonies drenched in instrumental atmosphere evocative of The Beatles. Check out “Made to Measure” and “Cemetery Walk.” But then there’s stuff like “1348 in which the band assumes a Black Sabbath-like metal band persona. Fair enough, but the attempt to merge the two is a force fit. One of my students found the twelve-minute title track “epic,” but to my ears it’s more like three different songs, not so much of a suite as a smashed musical plate in need of thematic glue. Mantis has fabulous moments, but there’s too much jam and not enough bready structure to contain it.

"Wendy and Lucy": A Woman and Her Dog, or Just a Dog?

Wendy and Lucy **
For a film whose tag line is “On the long road, friendship is everything,” there’s precious little friendship on offer in Wendy and Lucy. Friendship, to the best of my recollection, involves emotion, and interaction, and, um, people.

Michelle Williams stars as Wendy, a young woman on the road to Alaska in search of work. And stars is definitely the right word, as she’s practically the only human in the film with a speaking role. The other lead is Lucy, her beloved mutt. But because much of the film revolves around what happens when the two get separated, Williams must carry the entire movie on her own narrow shoulders.

Williams was brave and moving in Brokeback Mountain, conveying volumes with a few words and glances. Too bad she doesn’t have the same impact here, when the camera is on her nearly every moment of the film. She ultimately draws our sympathy, but not our interest

The problem isn’t Williams’ performance really, it’s the plot. Too little happens in this film, and it happens much too slowly. Maybe a director who knows how to embrace minimalism (Jim Jarmusch comes to mind) could have made this riveting, but director Kelly Reichart (who also cowrote the screenplay) doesn’t have his touch. The glacially-paced “action” covers several days of Wendy’s life, and seems to unspool in real time.

To make matters worse, there is little dialogue and even fewer clues to who Wendy is and why she’s on the road (Is she a drifter by choice? running away from trouble? desperate for work?) So without information, dialogue, or even a voiceover to ground the what action there is, we really don’t care as much as we should whether Wendy’s beat-up Honda Accord gets fixed, whether she is reunited with Lucy, or whether she ever gets to Alaska. And that indifference turns out to be a good thing, since the film ends abruptly with many basic questions still unanswered.

Despite a nomination for best feature from the Independent Spirit Awards, Wendy and Lucy turns out not only to be the story of a woman and her dog, but also something of a “dog”
itself.—P.B.